I Dug A Shallow Well For The House... (From Start To Finish!)

finding good usable water on her homestead wasn't easy but it started by hiring a well Witcher after he came out he found two good locations one was a hundred and twenty eight feet deep and one was 12 feet deep literally as soon as he left I started digging [Music] with my postal lager I got down 14 feet deep and obviously there was no water I rented a mini excavator and again was able to get down about 14 feet the soil was getting damp but no water [Music] there was one particular spot that I was fairly certain had water [Music] after digging down just a few feet the hole began to fill up with water the next morning when I showed up with the property this is how full it had gotten [Music] I knew we'd solve our water problem but the next question is how to best capture this water pump it nearly 500 feet up the hill store it properly where it's not going to freeze then filter it in a way where it's going to be usable around the property my backhoe would dig around 18 feet deep so my goal was to dig a 12 foot by 12 foot by 18 foot deep hole thinking that would be enough water for what we would need [Music] the well seems to be flowing about 15 gallons per minute we're in the middle of a drought as well so I knew this was good [Music] now that I have the water established I have to figure out how best to capture this I decided to use 48 inch concrete culverts as a well sister placing them on top of each other ended up giving me about an 18 foot deep cistern I was able to give these at the scratch and dent price of about $600 I then got about 30 tons of gravel and started filling up the hole around the concrete cistern I then put a landscaping fabric down first to try and keep any silt or sediment out of the cistern [Music] punching through the side of the cistern I put my one-inch pipe in place sealed it then covered it with six mil plastic [Music] now to run the water line on top of running the water line I also placed what's called a 16-2 landscaping lighting wire I will use this wire as the on/off switch when my water tank is full [Music] I'm only running 1 1 inch water line from the well all the way up to my 2500 gallon water tank which ends up being about a hundred and thirty vertical feet above my house and almost 900 linear feet [Music] [Music] along the way we installed six different Woodford yard hydrants I did not pressure test the water lines before backfilling but using pecks that was more than confident that we wouldn't have any leaks [Music] [Music] the backhoe would only go so far up the hill so I had to get the excavator to finish the job [Music] it was a spot on our hill that was a perfect spot for the water tank initially I thought it was about 90 feet high but I later found out it was about a hundred and forty [Music] this inevitably affected the water pressure in a good way [Music] I had to backfill as I went because this was the road that I was going to use to transport the water tank up the hill I spent a good four hours making sure that the pad was perfectly level and there were no rocks that could potentially rub a hole in the water tank [Music] two layers of carpet underneath that ensures that I won't damage the bottom of this tank I also made room for a second water tank that we may install sometime next year [Music] the take itself only weighs about 400 pounds but it's big and bulky I strapped her to my old truck and I was able to get it up the hill without the issues carefully using the excavator I got it in place I now tie in the pecs waterlines and I'm ready for the solar panels and the well pump I ended up going with a company called RPS solar or rural Power Systems because they had a complete kit [Music] after emailing with them they talked me through the process and it was very cut and dried very straightforward [Music] I initially installed the solar panels and it went up without any problems this is the well pump that sits about two feet off the bottom of the tank their system also has what's called a dry switch if we ever pump out too much water it shuts the pump off instead of letting it continue to run following their instructions I wired it up as they specified and voila we've got water initially I thought I would have around 45 to 50 psi but we ended up with 85 psi all right now [Music] but after a two and a half year struggle getting the water done is an absolute GameChanger [Music] the top right hand corner is the in-depth videos of the shallow L playlist [Music] you

Channel: Red Poppy Ranch

Views: 104,736

Keywords: off grid, off grid living, homesteading, homestead, off grid cabin, barn house, off grid homestead, Farm house, DIY Home Build, Idaho homestead, idahome, off grid idaho, red poppy ranch, living off the grid, shallow well, water, DIY well

Id: i8G07dWmbQo

Length: 10min 18sec (618 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 26 2018